ON CREATIONISM AND THE STOCK MARKET

From Advanced Mentoring student MR, a discourse. Please read carefully. In both Advanced Mentoring and Floydian Therapy a great many of our subscribers discuss religion with me, and the role that I believe it has in how one trades. I have found that people of strong religious beliefs often transfer their belief to within their trading discipline, and I spend many hours discussing "there is no black and white" with clients.

So, trader MR, a sharp, smart trader that is learning the game well, shares:

"Floyd, I’ve got to vent a bit – and I know you’ll at least read, and possibly understand some of this based on your background. I’ve made some comments about faith in my writings, reconciling science and faith etc. In reference to your comments on cult like religious bodies below, I was brought up in a rather “interesting” church – not a cult, but unique in it’s own way. I’m not of the Sabbath on Saturday or no Christmas mindset, but there were unique parameters in the belief system. No alcohol, no dancing.

Something I struggled with allot was the fact that science says the world is billions of years old and the Bible “seems to say” that the world was thrown together in a week and it’s about 6000 years old give or take. To me – if the earth is God’s handiwork, then his signature is going to be all over it and his work is going to align with his word. They can’t disagree. In my mind fossils, carbon dating, and light years of galaxies are God’s signature – those can’t disagree with theology. So earlier this year I went on a literary dive and found godandscience.org – founded by an former atheist who was able to make sense of God through science (not in a Tom Cruise Christian science kind of way, just a plain old carbon dating, Hebrew language studying, light year measuring kind of way.)

What it boiled down to was an interpretation of the Hebrew word “yom” used to describe the 7 days of creation. According to godandscience.org if you really dig into what the Hebrew is saying – it literally says the world was created in a number of ages over a long period of time. He’s got a great day by day scientific explanation of creation here - http://www.godandscience.org/apologetics/day-age.html#XvzK1QaHZJCv

So that works for me. I am ok now because science and God can get along and I can go on with life.

So I was looking at a post on facebook tonight that was questioning evolution and “how can anybody believe that crap” and blah blah blah. A pastor I know chimed in and he said basically “hey anything can happen – you have to understand the context of what’s written etc.” I agreed and posted my thoughts on the matter thinking I was sharing simple facts and empirical scientific proof. I thought I was just providing clarity and maybe helping somebody else make sense of a potentially confusing topic.

Was I ever wrong! They fired back with some link to answersingenesis.com. There is a whole foundation with a mission of spreading the “truth” that the world is 6000 years old, the bible says so and they have a HUGE webpage explaining why they think “yom” means 24 hours. I read the entire mind numbing page and the guy talked in circles, disproved himself, generally presented a flawed case – and went so far as to provide his impression of how he “thought God should have said it if he meant to say the world was billions of years old.” How can you or I decide how God should have said something? That’s like telling Dow how he should have charted. You just can’t go back and change how it’s done. It is what it is and if you changed it nobody would care anyway.

I kept reading.

They claim that the Bible is the “history book of the universe” and that it provides a reliable, eye-witness account of the beginning of all things, and can be trusted to tell the truth in all areas it touches on.

I was surprised to read this. Maybe I shouldn’t be, but it just surprised me. The Bible is NOT a history book. It’s the story of a creator and his creations how that creator chose to show love to mankind. Eye-witness account? (that’s a direct quote from their webpage) It’s not an eye-witness account; it’s a spiritual father’s record of what God chose to show him through meditative visions or whatever method was popular for deity revelation at that time. All we need to know is that BANG there’s the universe and the rest came together from there, but it certainly was not an eye-witness account. It just bothers me that there are people out there who are so bent on driving a wedge between “religion” and the intellectual world. No wonder Paul left Israel and went to Athens. He needed to be around some thinkers.

To me – the point of religion is not to drive people apart, cause debates, and start idiotic nonsensical discussions on Facebook. I have a long way to go when it comes to studying world religions but I have come to this brief conclusion based on my limited and perhaps idealistic knowledge. I think at the core we all want the same thing. I think if the truth were known we have more in common than we want to admit. I’ve seen conspiracy theories that Jesus is Mohamed (shhh don’t tell anybody). Buddhism may capture the science behind the human spirit and creates a practice in which man can experience his spiritual nature and venture to find peace. Buddhism provides a system, a framework. Now what if Jesus is the soul that is placed in the center of Buddha’s chest? Naïve? Perhaps. Heresy? Some would definitely say so. But there is a connection. About 2009 years ago “wise men” from the “east” took a random road trip to Bethlehem to visit some baby who happened to be God incarnated on earth. So my impression is that these wise men must have had insight into the ultimate nature of reality in order to leave their home to go to a foreign town to see this super natural being come to earth. That would not just happen by chance. They would have to be highly disciplined individuals with intuitive spiritual depth to be able to be attuned to the journey calling them. Where else would we find people deeply in touch with the deepest nature of truth who would be able to sense the arising of a new spiritual age and be alert enough to follow that lead and journey to a foreign land to welcome its birth and unify the worlds? I’d love to see the journal of those travelers and their writings of the impact it had on their spirituality, what practices came from it, and what truths they found.

I admit, that’s got allot of holes in it, and someday when I read allot more books and understand everything better I’ll probably look back at that and laugh at myself. But the point is: we’re not here to burn bridges and build walls. And we’re certainly not here to ignore the truth and the plain and simple facts while promoting ignorance as the only way to eternal redemption. Oh yeah, that brings up another issue – the get out of hell free card. One part of my upbringing in church was the guilt. If I “got saved” once I must have “got saved” 100 times as a kid. I was just never sure if I was ok and I certainly did not want to be damned to hell. I sat through a hundred sermons on the guilt of man and our total inadequacy to redeem ourselves. Something I have come to realize is that the ENTIRE Old Testament has pretty much nothing to do with salvation in the afterlife, but rather a set of guidelines of how to live in harmony with your neighbor, and ultimately how to live a life in harmony with God while we’re still alive on earth. The Pharisees messed that all up when they turned the law itself into dogma and they missed the point of relationship, so Jesus showed up on the scene to remind them to “Love your neighbor.” That pissed them off so they killed him in the name of god and the whole world has been fighting over religion ever since. Good grief. So anyway, one part of my childhood I had to get over was the guilt thing and I have since realized that the point of life is to keep thinking and continuing to seek the Truth.

Back to the venting session. It’s annoying to me that there are people out there who proclaim “The Gospel” yet refute scientific truth. It makes it appear that you need to check your brain at the door when you walk in to a church. That’s a shame because I just don’t think that’s the case. I think the more objective we are about the facts, the more we can find ways to understand each other – rather than draw lines in the sand and argue. But here I am, arguing with myself on my laptop venting to Floyd who is probably laughing, or maybe groaning by this point…

So in closing – to answer Floyd’s question. I think I am getting to the point that I can ask my own questions. I have begun to journal more on my emotions, study myself through the day, to watch myself and see how I can learn and where I need help. I think that’s important in life. Also, I need empirical data to be able to talk to a physiatrist with any kind of clarity. I am certainly open to more questions from Floyd as I am sure he has a few to offer, and I enjoy probing my mind periodically and thinking out loud. Or rather – thinking through laptop.

Trader MR"

Floyd: I'd like to open up this blog to subscribers this week to discuss the following around Trader MR's thinking, led with these questions from Floyd:

1. If the Sumerians invented glue 7000 years ago, creationism is proven factually wrong.

There are numerous "facts" that disprove" the 6000 year theory

2. When one thinks in "absolutes" (this must be) how does this affect them as a trader.

3. Could The Bible, Jesus, and faith all be metaphorical in teaching us the great secret is that WE are God.

4. Floyd writes to teach constantly "THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS BLACK AND WHITE, OR A SITUATION THAT WHITE MUST WIN." (Not people now, but the factuality of black and white.

5. Floyd writes to teach constantly "A ROCK is NOT HARD". Could this be true in helping explain the above discourse?